Up at a time that I shouldn't be.

Thinking about things that I shouldn't be.

Sad about things I've been sad about for a couple years, I been low, I been down and out.

And it cost funerals of love, had so many doubts.

But I'm still here, moving forward on a different route.


I would give it all up, to make it all work.
I wish I could say, that they knew my worst.
End of the day, it's my gift, my curse.
At the end of the day, I know my worth.

Through everything,
I love you shawty.
You know you do me *****, shawty.
I need you to make me, happy.
Over you, there will be nobody.

Think about each other when we shouldn't be.
Missing all the past when I shouldn't be.
I be on the go.
You be on the go.
We go back and forth.
Different road
They don't know how it goes
But still I got my pride
Knowing I don't wanna be alone.
Certain times we disagree and you just let it all go.
But you're sitting right beside you though.

I'd kick it with my friend and I'd make it all worst.
But still I tried to hide it but show my worth.
Seems you putting my last, but many say first.
At the end of the day I know your worth.

Running in the streets when I shouldn't be.
Trying to make it off of writing poetry.
Loving all the things that I shouldn't be.
Knowing that it only should be you and me.
I was feeling blue.
Didn't have a clue.
Trying to figure out what to do.
And I'm losing you.
Soon I'll do a show and I'll glo'
With you in the crowd.
While I'm speaking loud.
And deep down, you are really proud.
Coming this spring, Ima fling
Ima Seek my dream.
And no matter what, Ima love you through everything.

i don't believe it
i cannot take it
you might mean it
but i'll just fake
you're so sincere
i'm so full of ****
thoughtful words i hear
and i still can't quit

In the gray light of this late autumn morning
a young mother with holiday bags on her arms
and another set underneath her eyes, carries on
– assuming with positive intent – the American
tradition of some overweight man crawling
through chimneys. Stepping out unscathed by soot.
Her son, barely three and giddy with trust, hungrily
eats this up like a peaceful Thanksgiving meal.
These lies that we carry cautiously like gifts
and pass onto our children like genes who
then pass them onto his or her friends always
(in the end) come back unpleasantly to hurt us.

On a cold autumn day, on the edge
of a railroad bridge, fifteen feet high,
a young bulky black kid contemplates
the impact, the end awaiting him

on the surface of a historically
winding boulevard. Below, service
men and women stand wet from rain,
stand huddled, foggy with confusion.

A paramedic, understanding
the surgeon’s warning, stands poised, close by,
blowing curls of smoke from her thin lips.
Had I the nerve, or just the access,

I would climb the slick, grassy hillside
that leads to the old rusted train tracks
and ask the young boy for his thick hands,
ask him what he thinks the moment was

like before L’Wren Scott held the rope
in her hands, the last breath in her lungs?
I’d ask him what he thinks it was like
before Don Cornelius planted

cold metal against his head and pulled
the trigger? Ask him what he thinks was
in the oven before Plath entered the kitchen?

You know, just to be heard one last time.

the tenants who
came before
marauded this temple
you so keenly
worship.
so how do I let you in
without mistrust,

even though you claim
to be
      'a permanent resident'

the stories of women you write sonnets upon , or the ones on caricatures
i consume.
they're all fiction to me.

for the women i know are all looking out the window, wandering into endless abyss.
or waiting on tiptoes - to be tied down
in the bonds of 'holy' matrimony.
when they were young,
living on dictums of
father and brothers was an
unspoken, but frequently
enforced trend.
now no longer lean saplings, (who could be stomped upon with ease)
but sprawling, majestic trees
with branches chartering territories
that remain  forbidden  for the tree.
their offshoots
are sheared (for they can't be crushed with ease)
in the name of honour.
to ebb out all the figments of
rebellion, the tree
might hold in it's gamut.
still tamed in the garden,
a new gardener comes in place.
a slightly younger one, who
comes with his own tenets.
restraining her with a
strap, in the name of modesty.
he satiates himself by strangling
last shreds of revolt
her father couldn't slay.
the woman is caged in bars of shame,
all in the name of  honour.
yet again.
why is it that the women i know only lessen with age?
but the men smirk upon,only inflating their slyness. as the years grow on them.

Shakespeare, gazing into a waning sky,
said that her eyes were nothing like the sun.
Collins, picking fruit from trees, said that she
is not the purple wind in the orchard.

To follow this long trend of un-blazoned
poetry, I want to share with the world
that you are not the Charlie Parker jazz
jumping from the mouth of a black Phillips

radio, nor are you the paper that I
am writing this first draft on, nor
the morning coordinate geometry
that puzzled me today (or maybe you

are). Even more so, you are not the moon-
light staining trees, the stack of 18th
century British literature in the study,
your grandmother’s painting in the dining

room. Nonetheless, you are you: masterful,
opinionated, understanding; a
beloved whose beauty is better left
unmentioned in some new age poetry.

It was Freddie Hubbard on the trumpet
blowing on about some blue moon,
as if the yellow one that has occupied
the night and sometimes morning sky
wasn’t enough, when I decided to write
a poem about thinking about tomorrow.

How I will rise before the rest, run a few
miles on a treadmill overlooking a busy
boulevard and read the private memoirs
of a justified sinner. And when the tomorrow
that I was thinking about comes with its new
minutes and hours, its new obstacles and

headaches, I will think back to today
and remember the morning kiss you gave,
the silence between your body and mine,
the amount of times you changed your outfit
before the lake, the museum: the live dances
from cultures around the world that kept us from

viewing new installments, the interracial ballet
dancers tip-toeing to a tune well-known to childhood
ears. But the one memory of yesterday that will be
with me until death do us part will not be of the
Shakespeare that I read nor of the raspberry
cheesecake we shared but of you: sitting alone,

waist-deep in a bubble bath. ******* pert and
motherly exposed. Resting comfortably above
your ribcage. Showing more beauty than age.
A glass of cabernet sitting where the razors and
shampoo usually sat. A young adult novel in the
white palms your small hands. But yes. The one

memory that will be with me until death do us
part and well, even after that, will be of me looking
at you: naked in a tub, your glasses over the bridge
but on the edge of your nose, and the rest of my life

before me.

There are a lot of words out there and the day that I reached out
with a warm autumn coffee and pumpkin scone in my hands

I realized that Merriam-Webster could not help me, that the
O.E.D could not help me, that trying to find the perfect words

to describe your bundled spirit of simplicity and truth, of
imperfection and loveliness would take centuries. By the end

of my reaching I realized that my arms had grown tired, had
fallen to my hips and hung there like a forgotten thought

in the mind, that my spiced coffee and frosted scone had spilled
a wonderful orange across the pen and tablet of my heart.